In his new book, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe does not hold back his view of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions as unfit for the job, according to excerpts reviewed by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
The excerpts come from McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, in which the former FBI official describes his experience working with Sessions. The book will be out on Feb. 19, but the two outlets received selections of it in advance.
According to the Journal, McCabe’s book describes multiple interactions in which Sessions seemed obsessed with tying together crime and immigration — for instance, he’d ask where terrorism suspects were born, and if the suspect was born in the United States, he would ask where their parents were born.
The former FBI head says the former attorney general “believed that Islam ― inherently ― advocated extremism,” the Post wrote.
Sessions would also complain to McCabe about his bureau’s workforce, according to the Journal.
“Back in the old days, he said, you all only hired Irishmen,” McCabe writes, per the Journal. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos.”
The Post said McCabe also describes Sessions as someone with “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues.”
In the book, McCabe also describes President Donald Trump as petty and dysfunctional through small details about his behavior, per the Post.
“Between the world of chaos and the world of order stands the rule of law,” McCabe writes, according to the Post. “Yet now the rule of law is under attack, including from the president himself.”
McCabe was the FBI’s acting director during the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. McCabe also led the agency during the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller and amid the Trump administration’s efforts to discredit the FBI. He was fired just before his expected retirement date in March 2018.